potholes cause me to want to stiffen my car!

[leo766]

Ok I have new front endlinks and prolly will get rear endlinks for my new whiteline sway, but also I have a set of Tanabe performance springs I am about to put on, and with the roads as hellish as they are, I lost all 4 tires hitting a pothole a couple weeks ago, and now i am afraid every time i hit a pothole things get worse, so I was thinking of maybe buying some brace sets like the gt spec ladder and trailing arms maybe? perhaps a rear top brace? corksport and street unit each sell their own for 99$ seems kinda cheap does it do anything really?

Anyways also i have not seen any reviews for the autoexe brace sets either, the ones that stiffen up the bottom tunner, heck is it even the right idea to stiffen my car to help it withstand impacts? or would that just cause things to bend even more easily... I am sorta torn between wether the car needs to be more rigid or if the flexibility is very necissary for this car to perform, i would guess tightening things up would at least help in the twisties right?

 

[sharky]

Man, you have the opposite opinion that I do. Those NoVA potholes make me wish I was driving a Buick. My poor speedie is getting shaken to pieces.

 

[SamNavy]

Whaddya mean "lost all 4 tires" and "I'm afraid things get worse". Do you mean that you popped all 4 tires hitting a single pothole, and you're afraid if you hit more potholes that you'll pop more tires? Are you running underinflated 30series r-comps? Later you say "cause things to bend"... did you bend your rims as well? What tires and wheels do you run, and what are they inflated to?

As a tire hits a pothole, there are essentially 3 ways for the vehicle to absorb the energy of the impact. Through the tire, through the suspension, through the chassis. The suspension should absorb most of it if the tire is properly inflated. The tire will deform a little, and the chassis will flex. If you stiffen the chassis, the energy that was absorbed there will be transferred to the suspension/tire. Combine that with a stiff suspension and underinflated tire, and of course you'll blow tires. Even a properly inflated tire can only absorb so much energy... stiff springs and chassis stiffening don't help.

As for twisties, which is a completely different subject... stiffening the chassis can help the car perform better. But you run into the same problem turning into a corner as you do hitting a pothole. The vehicle in motion has a certain amount of energy that must be transferred as the vehicle changes direction. If you stiffen the chassis, you're asking the tires/suspension to absorb all of that energy... but are they up to the task?

My favorite example are ricer turds who throw a strut-tower brace on their stock Civic and wonder why they can't turn anymore... why they push through the corners now and have mad wheel-hop. If feels "stiffer", which must be good, right? Wrong? With stock shocks and OEM tires, all the thing does is push.

If you live in a place with bad roads and insist upon a stiff performance suspension springs/sways and run low-profile tires... be prepared to go through tires. My advice... slow down, drive around potholes, buy higher profile all season tires, check inflation every few weeks (more often in winter), don't stiffen the chassis.

 

[Blendercloud]

I would recommend before you spend any more money that you buy this book. It will teach you a lot about how sports car suspensions work. It's a small price to pay to learn something. Much cheaper than learning through trial and error. I have read this book and it's pretty damned awesome.

https://www.amazon.com (commissions earned)

 

[leo766]

yes 1 potholes 4 tires, it was about 2feet deep

however in the past ive ben suspension attachment points hitting these va potholes in my z28 , and it literally caused the suspension to be unalianable, im already pritty set on things thatll take me faster through the twisties, but i am asking about braces cuz last i checked if you hit something hard enough, even if they can unbend it, itll weaken the metal, so i want everything under the car to be reinforced, cuz i dunno if these cars were made to hit holes in the road so deep,

as far as rice turds with strut bars, well i don't know why even rice turds would do that since it seems we have a ton of reinforced black bracing around the firewall anyways, that stiffens things up

im more looking for whats out there, i know autoexe and gtspec make some products, i already have whiteline sway and springs

 

[Neofolis]

From my experience, stiffening will cause more problems with potholes. My setup is 215/35x19 with H&R springs and the low profile combined with stiffer springs results in easier wheel damage, alignment being knocked out and possible damage to various parts of the suspension setup, not to mention the resulting tyre wear from the alignment being out.

If you want to reduce damage from potholes, you need to cushion the impact as much as possible, but almost anything you do to that end will also reduce handling performance. It's similar to the way they build modern skyscrapers with a lot of flexibility to allow them to cope better with high winds.